Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

Day 30 - The First Track

May 1st, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 15 secs

anthony bourdain, carl jung, chinese saying, circumambulation, instagram, jungle oats, scotch, trackers, venn diagram

Carl Jung had an idea of circumambulation where you exist in your fullest potential in your future self. You achieve this future self by paying attention to what truly grabs you with the feeling of aliveness now. You move towards and also around your future self. As you do this you will see patterns and themes about what is core and essential to yourself. If you look back over your life you will see that there are themes that continually emerge on your Venn diagram. You see all of this as you spiral through time towards your future potential.

Day 29 - Pattern Tracking

April 30th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 9 secs

adrenal, leopards mating, patterns, rhino bull, tracker, trauma, tree

get excited about it as a tracker as its all about how the pattern is laid down. We can learn with attention and all become pattern trackers. I’ve been thinking about how all the mystics found a way of living and then shared the peace and joy of that way. The doctrine often came after their lives. I have found a way to live here that is simple and peaceful. I have made a home in it, but is it making a home in me?

Day 28 - Call me Crazy

April 29th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 17 secs

alternative energy, braiding sweetgrass, creative response, crocodiles, green models, mind, overstory, permaculture, waste management system, zen koen

While we can’t obviously live in trees in the wild, its worth noting that if we could most of us would be closer to enlightenment. There are really opportunities to questioning how we get off the progress train with nuance. We have to face the truth that not all progress is progress. Modern life ain’t it all cracked up to be. It’s certainly worth some of your capacity to innovate before you have kids and they become teenagers. Life architecture as an activism is a very engaging way to spend the blink of an eye we all get.

Day 27 - Who Would You Be Without Your Story

April 28th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 43 secs

byron katie, clean pain, dirty pain, energy, hyena, running, sand river, scrub hare, wild dog, zebra

There is a weird metaphysical component to how life follows our stories. The key is to pay attention to the ones that cause suffering. What I’m sayin is that you have two options to become more aware.
Ask yourself what story you are telling about yourself when you re suffering
Or you can get into a hyena wild dog pack fight.

Day 26 - Define Abundance

April 27th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

abundance, book of mormon, community, nature, presence, quality, shame, stillness, success, utopia, warlord, wealth

What else happens when you get still is that you become aware there are many places in your life where you have not showered yourself in glory. You have to face up to a certain amount of shame in your own behavior that frankly if you keep busy you can hide away. To be still means that you can really revisit those moments. Even if you don’t want to it will come up.

Day 25 - Sidetracked

April 26th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 43 secs

ancestors, camp life, elephant bull, elephants, feral, friends, kettle shower, leopards, mating leopards, parfuri, presence, stars, tracking, whales

My quest to track a big bull elephant has still not happened. It keeps getting interrupted by lion tracks and pegasus rhino. Still this is a mission that remains high on my priority list. An animal like that has presence who has walked the ancient paths of his ancestors. There are myths of elephants who used to frequent the eastern seaboards of Southern Africa and commune with whales. These animals exist in a conscious that is beyond the verbal mind. There is no future and no past.

Day 24 - Pegasus

April 25th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

aware, mission, pegasus, present, purpose, retreats, rhino, st frances, tracking

Losing tracks is part of tracking. Losing yourself is part of life. I consoled myself with knowing that some of Londolozi’s elite trackers lose the tracks from time to time. St Frances said wherever you go preach the gospel but only where absolutely necessary use words.

Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit

April 24th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 35 secs

africa, caprivi, chief seattle, chobe, innocent ngwenya, kruger, lions, mana, okovango, serengeti, spirit, tracker academy, tracking, ubuntu

How do we get back to the spirit of life?

Ubuntu - I am because of you, you are because of me.
Your presence helps me be a person.
It seems to run deeper than that. Deeper than people, the animals, plants, rivers.

Get quiet enough to really hear the voice inside you. Follow that and I suspect it will take you back instantly to the spirit of life.

Day 22 - Trauma Healed is Medicine

April 23rd, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 47 secs

alone, boarding school, boy, compassion, dysfunction, intimacy, loneliness, solitude

If you would like to understand your own darkness ask yourself how you have hurt people in the past. If you want to understand trauma look for where you feel helpless, frozen and isolated.
If you want to understand shame ask what you are afraid to share.
If you want to understand how to truly heal find out what your gifts are and share them.

Day 21 - Mystical Visitation

April 22nd, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 28 secs

lazy, leopard, monkey, mystical, running

Waking up I felt no motivation to get out of bed. So I just lay there.
I thought of all the years I suffered from depression when I woke with the dreaded weight on me.

Day 20 - Centered

April 21st, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

attention, elephant, elephant bulls, felt experience, firelight, goshawk, meaening, spurfowl, termites

Day 19 - Track Awareness

April 20th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 19 secs

ant bear, body compass, career, david rattray, david whyte, martha beck, shaman, track awareness, tracking, wet

There are worlds are information in our worlds that we don’t even know about. As I was walking past the ant bear hole a miraculous thing happened. A honeyguide came and invited me on an adventure. The bird hovered near me chattering with intense excitement. I was deeply moved by the collaboration between man and nature. I stood alone really feeling it, my own ties to the hunter gatherers. Unfortunately it was late and I could not go with the bird.